Dear Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR
Forgive
me for shredding your name, but as your letter of July 6th was in the
same format, I assumed you would find it preferable if I used the same
scheme. It's best to assume it was done deliberately rather than being
the product of the same method you use to formulate your political
positions from one minute to another. Thank you for your letter
reminding me that I may legally contribute an amount greater than the
average American family income to your campaign, but I suggest that if
you can't run a campaign with the hundreds of millions the corporate
aristocracy has given you, you might not be the frugal sort of leader
you'd like us to believe you are.
I'm glad to hear that
"Growing up, I was fortunate to have been an eyewitness to the American Dream."
but I suggest that your vantage point might have been different from that of the actual
"people
[who] worked hard, seized opportunities, and hammered out a legacy of
prosperity and hope for their children and grandchildren."
Most
of them didn't have multi-millionaire parents who served as governors
and Presidential cabinet members and of course very few of them ever
realized the kind of success you had handed to you. But I have to ask
how you have arrived at the notion that people can no longer work hard
or seize opportunities -- after all you're currently engaged in at least
one of those activities and I have no doubt that you've spent many
hours campaigning. I see absolutely nothing in "Obama's policies" that
have interfered with your or my or anyone else's endeavors. Perhaps you
could enlighten me as to what policies you refer. Doing that would at
least set you apart from your colleagues and staff writers since not one
of them seems to know or acknowledge that those policies have either
been thwarted or in many cases are policies inherited from the previous
administration along with its unprecedentedly expensive wars. Obama has
lowered taxes for most of us -- wasn't that supposed to be the
Republican panacea? Where were all the jobs that tax structure was
supposed to create? Why did we have 8 years with zero private sector
job growth which then began to grow under "Obama's policies?" Without
some actual economic policy suggestions that might somehow pay off the
massive debt Mr. Bush left us -- I mean suggestions other than making
our government more like the weak and ineffectual government of India so
as to import a wage scale like theirs, without ideas like eliminating
Social Security and Medicare and the very health care plan you wrote yourself -- without some real ideas that a moment and a contribution won't reverse, all we can do about opportunity is dream.
Anyway
Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR, I remember too. I
remember solid growth and high employment levels and a land of
opportunity when we had a 90% top tax bracket and strong unions. My
grandparents remember a time when that wasn't so and 12 hour work days
and 6 day work weeks with no vacation or benefits and mostly the rich
and the Caucasian went to college was the way it should be according to
Republicans -- and you were a communist if you didn't agree.
I
remember when I couldn't live in many neighborhoods, when I would be a
felon in Florida and most of the south for marrying outside my race -- a
time when many jobs and many schools were not open to me and other
minorities and when firehoses and dogs were turned on women and children
who may have disagreed with your fictitious views of our immediate
past. I remember the "conservative" opinions and I don't see that
they've changed all that much. For all our problems - for all the
problems Republican policies have caused - Today my children and my
grandchildren are closer to their dreams than I could have been and
it's still a better country than it was when you were born.
In
terms of upward mobility and opportunity, in terms of education and
health our country has been sinking for a very long time, with perhaps
the exception of the all too brief Clinton years. I'm sure you remember
Clinton, the fellow your ilk branded as being against Capitalism and
business and the "American Dream" and many other absurd and dishonest
charges you now try to pin on Mr. Obama.
I'd also be interested to know what your policies actually are
other than to beat Obama at any cost and undo the health plan you wrote
for Massachusetts. I'm asking how you're different because I and most
of the economists I know feel that no matter who is elected, the only
way Republican generated debt ( be honest now, the biggest
borrowers and spenders in your lifetime have been Republicans and much
of the "spending" you accuse Democrats of consists of paying Republican
bills) the debt will finally be settled by devaluing the Dollar and
evaporating the savings of Americans, leaving us with the kind of
America I dream about and wake up screaming. There's nothing you can do
to change it.
So no, Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR, I
won't be putting a stamp on the return envelope to spare your
billionaire budget, but as as a measure of my esteem, I am enclosing an
envelope sized piece of 1/8th inch rolled steel for ballast. It's
American made steel. It's a piece of history. Use it as a reminder of
how the greedy liars on the right exported opportunity. Use it as a
paper weight for all that money Daddy Kochbux gives you.
Sincerely,
Capt. Fogg Fogg Capt RG banana fanna fogg . .
Since you put it that way I find it hard to argue anything. At least in the head to head match up of Obama and the Mittens who wears "flip-flops."
ReplyDeleteI am concerned, deeply concerned as a matter of fact that our president (irrespective of who he may be) may very well be just a figurehead and the oligarchs who remain hidden in the shadows are really the ones pulling the strings.
At the very least I find the thought intriguing. As well as quite plausible.
I think there's probably some figure-headedness in every high level official and it does take an awful lot of money to get elected. Even for local offices, there's always someone with big money behind them necessitating more money to fight him. It's like an arms race.
ReplyDeleteThese days some of the oligarchs are pretty visible though.
To me the survivability of the kind of democracy we were intended to be has to do with separating political power from economic power since without that separation we are indeed an oligarchy, a Feudalistic economy, the very thing we broke away from originally.
At this point, the economic damage done by the New Right (I can't call them conservative) is too big for any of the silly rhetoric or simplistic positions to repair. We're going to have to step down a rung or two. It would be nice if we could do it with grace, but I fear as our economic ability to dictate to the world wanes, we'll depend more on waving our weapons and shouting threats and bragging about how great we are. Sooner or later we will have to fabricate a way to demonstrate how powerful we are and it won't be pretty.
Yes, I'm concerned too that no president is going to be able to bring us back to that mythical America of our corrupted memory and if somehow some genius had a way to make us all content and prosperous, he'd be blown away by a nuclear blast of lies and propaganda from people who would love to be Barons and Counts and Dukes, if not in name, in power.
I think it's sad that in so many ways, we are a much better country than ever, but the ability of madmen to baffle us, confuse us and most of all infuriate us makes it invisible. Take Florida's own Allen West who can stand there and tell us Obama is in favor of slavery and that half the Democrats are Communists and should be 'deported.' Listen to it and try not to think of Germany in the 1930's.
One of the more informative books (at least for me) is the Ominous Parallels, written by Professor Leonard Piekoff. Written in the early '80's before Rand's death, and endorsed by her it parallels Nazi Germany, and or fascism with present day America.
DeleteThe book has a decidedly Objectivist view, however is is relevant to American economic reality and politics in this day and age. It came to mind immediately as I read your comment.
A book I've recommended to many, probably few have bothered to take my recommendation seiously.
Capt. Fogg Fogg,
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. As for madmen baffling us, yes, it's frustrating. A variety of this is how tongue-tied the Demo-pundits get over some of these campaign flaps, when they should be able to cut right to the heart of the matter.
Even a dinosaur should be able to do that -- take, for instance, the current rage about the Mittster's supposed Bain Capital role after 1999. The president's defenders keep falling into the trap of the Romney people's legalistic language, as in "I wasn't even in the office after 1999, so you can't blame me if they started cooking up Irish babies and serving them as a cheap replacement for Christmas geese." No, Mitt, maybe not -- but the real point has to do with what a strange notion of responsibility such remarks entail. The man owned the company lock, stock, and barrel, right? That's what I've heard, anyway. So if one OWNS a company and has one's name plastered all over it as president, chairman of the board, grand poobah, and head honcho, how the brother-truck is he not responsible for what said company does? Or at the very least, how does it not reflect on the abovementioned poobah-honcho if and when they close some factory down and fire everybody, or help ship jobs overseas, if indeed that's what they did?
Believe it or not, nobody seems to have come by this simple insight -- not even all the "Democratic strategerists" and professional talkers I've seen. I should think that ordinary people (I mean by that anybody who has slightly less than 250 million dollars -- say, 249 million) would have a hard time understanding why the owner and board chairman of a firm finds it unfair to be tagged with the alleged doings of the company he owns and chairs. What world is the former governor of MA living in? THAT is the issue, not his SEC statements.
In general, so much of what one hears amounts to what I'll just call "impoverished thinking" -- either accepting some other cynical opponent's "talking points" as one's own framework or taking up and running with a simplistic strain of thought in total disregard of any number of other strains that really should be easily identified and considered before opening one's big trap. It's the bane -- pun intended -- of modern American political discourse.
A fine example of accepting a cynical opponent's framework: using the phrase "job creators" unironically. I've heard some delightful non-official takedowns of that sham logic: after all, we can say, it's consumer desire that generates jobs; businesses are essential and should be treated with respect so long as they're not dumping antifreeze into some pristine trout stream, etc., but what they do is HIRE people, which isn't quite the same thing as creating jobs -- fail to see this matter of the real engine of growth, the real source of advancement and a better life, and you end up sounding sickeningly grateful for every dog-gammed crumb your corporate lords and masters deign to toss your miserable way; i.e. you end up a working-class or lower-middle-class Republican who identifies with and votes for the small cadre of ruthless Captains of Industry who actually run the country. I'd just love to see Messrs. Obama and Biden themselves pick up this insight and maximize its impact: tell ordinary working people that THEY are the ones who drive the great engine of capitalism and make the social forms that correlate with it worthwhile. Not aloof "nothing they do reflects on me even though I own the company" business tycoons, but the PEOPLE.
Dino
ReplyDelete"tell ordinary working people that THEY are the ones who drive the great engine of capitalism "
If we tell them that, we'll be accused of being communists, but Capitalism has become another word for Feudalism. Stemming the flow of money is offered as a solution for a capitalist economy starved of money and really nothing means anything at all. It's all just a lot of word wooze designed to foster rage. Enrage and conquer.
I swear that I'll mess up the nest person who tells me how wonderful it was back in that moveable "golden age" of dreams or how bad "Obama's policies" have been. I swear I will.
RN,
If there's a Kindle version, I'll read it.
Capt. Fogg Magog Banana Bog (or whatever your official campaign-funds-seeking letterhead says today),
ReplyDeleteWord wooze it is. One wants to believe that the truth will out, that -- to borrow from Livy in Ab Urbe Condita, 22.39, "Veritatem laborare nimis saepe aiunt, exstingui nunquam." ("They say that truth is often hard-pressed, but never extinguished.) That kind of humanism is hard to put much faith in these days.
Bravo!
ReplyDeleteThe points you made here were concise, well-written, and, above-all, passionate. Why is it that those in power have no idea how to relate? Why is it that those on the right think that this man is acceptable?
I consistently post links on Facebook asking for my righty friends to explain. No one even tries.
Nietzsche said something about mankind loving to be deceived and thriving on deception. I think it's obvious. I think half of it is that if you start rattling about how awful it is now that we have "that Obama" you have fond the quickest and cheapest way of joining a large fraternity and that's too tempting to pass up.
ReplyDeleteThey're happy to tell you we have the highest taxes ever and anywhere - we don't - and all kinds of other things from death panels to that idiocy about regulation killing the job market.
But what can you expect. Americans are ignorant and stupid and love to be deceived.